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Franken Coleman Update

By gregladen on December 30, 2008.

The next few days will be the most interesting, potentially, in the Franken Coleman recount.

Notice that I do not use any words like "Debacle, Fiasco, Circus, Swampmire" and so on when speaking of the recount. This is because this is a democratic (as in America! The Greatest Democracy in the World Love it or Leave It" and all that democratic) process and I am a patriot and I refuse to malign our great nation and its constitutional government. The simple truth is that an election is a kind of adversarial process and when a recount is mandated by the processes, the adversarial parts keep going a bit longer. This is not a fiasco, this is democracy.

Anyway, there are two or three issues hanging. One is a set of possible correction to the recount spreadsheet ... clerical errors ... that are being made today. One is which absentee ballots were incorrectly rejected ... if that is determined than they can be counted. The state supreme court mandated that this issue be settled by mutual agreement by tomorrow (the 31st) though some sources are saying by Friday. I don't know if this is a matter of a change of which I'm unaware or of inaccurate reporting, but I'm looking into it Finally, there is the issue of the double counted ballots. I believe this will be settled by the Canvassing board.

Harry Reid has sent out signals that the Senate would take action shortly after the Canvassing board made it's final certification. This would be a matter of finishing the process so that it does not go to court.

One could argue that one could aways take an election result to court, but this is not really true. There is the matter of separation of powers, and it is hard to imagine who's army would have to be invoked for the US Supreme Court to overrule a determination by the Senate as to who occupies a particular senatorial seat.

Tags
Al Franken
Norm Coleman
Politics

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Greg, I seem to recall the court issuing an extension on the absentee ballots. I took it at the time as a message to the Coleman camp that dragging their feet wouldn't help them.

Yeah, Stephanie, the Court ruled unanimously last week that Coleman's "duplicate ballot" challenge be denied, and in that decision they gave the campaigns until Friday to get the absentee stuff straight.